Spare The Change

As India moves towards a cashless economy, pioneering e-wallet moguls, Upasana Taku and Bipin Preet Singh, Founders of MobiKwik, share insights on monetary transactions done with the click of a button.

- Radhika Sikaria

Founded in 2009, to enhance a seamless flow of payments online, MobiKwik has come a long way. In the wake of demonetisation, Bipin Preet Singh, CEO and Founder and Upasana Taku, Co-Founder,talk about ease of transaction offered by the e-wallet.

How would you describe the interface offered by MobiKwik?

Upasana: MobiKwik powers masses in India with cashless payments. We have the simplest user interface, for which we are loved by over 50 million users.

To cater to the payments preferences and requirements of masses, we also launched MobiKwik Lite in November, which is an under-1-MB app, available in eight Indian languages that can be downloaded using basic EDGE connection within 30 seconds. We also have a product called m-gullak that caters to the urban poor and helps them save as less as rupees two a day. It is also the only wallet to offer cash loading with cash pick up in five cities, namely, New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Jaipur and Surat; and cash deposit at over 100,000 locations in 10,000 Indian cities.

In 2009, when majority consumers were still sceptical about online payments, what was the inspiration behind MobiKwik?

Bipin: Taking India ahead of its time in terms of payments was my dream. I never liked walking to a store for a thing as simple as mobile recharge and wanted masses to have the convenience of being able to pay bills and recharge their phones from their laptops or mobile phone. With this thought as inspiration, MobiKwik was conceived. I started the company in 2009 and soon Upasana joined me as the co-founder. We bootstrapped for the first three years. Till now, MobiKwik has received three rounds of funding. The journey has been wonderful.